To Joseph L. Blamire
23 June 1872 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: ViU, UCCL 00759)

Hartford 23d

Dr Sir

I will enclose preface for Roughing It. I suppose it will do just as it is for two volumes if you divide the book.1

Will try not to forget to ship the revised Roughing It today.

Ys Truly

S L Clemens.

[enclosure:]

Preface to the English Edition.2

Messrs. Geo Routledge & Sons pay me [ coy copyright] on my books. The moral grandeur of this thing cannot be overestimated in an age like ours, when even the sublimest natures betray the taint of earth, & the noblest & ‸the‸ purest among us will [steal. at J. C. H. ] 3 This firm is truly an abnormal [firm. Other] firms republish my books & refine & instruct & uplift whole tribes & peoples with them, yet never pay the benefactor a cent. If there is another in foreign parts with similar instincts I have not heard of it. ‸had personal dealings with it.‸

My appreciation of [ this the ] moral singularity ‸I am lauding‸ is attested by the fact that at [ their the] request of Messrs G R & S Routledge ‸this house‸ ‸this publishing house‸ I have sat up ni wrought diligently, here in oppressive midsummer, until I have accomplished a thorough revision & correction of this book for republication in England, in defiance of the opinions of eminent physicians that ‸the great & wise‸ historian Josephus,4 that “during the enervating season of summer, all persons so delicately constituted as authors & preachers ought to refrain from arduous employments ‸of [any] kind‸ & do nothing but worship nature, breathe the pure atmosphere of woods & mountains, & fool around.”

Mark Twain.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens absentmindedly wrote “Roughing It,” here and below, when he meant to write “Innocents Abroad.” Despite the intention expressed in his previous letter to Blamire, Clemens enclosed only one preface. The Routledges did divide the book into two parts—The Innocents Abroad and The New Pilgrims’ Progress—and soon pressed for a second preface (10 July 72 to Blamire, n. 1).

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2 Within a few weeks Clemens decided to revise this preface (21 July 72 to Blamire).

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3 This canceled reference to publisher John Camden Hotten is apparently the vestige of an earlier version, now lost. Hotten’s piracies had recently become a subject of public controversy: in mid-May Hotten and the Routledges had begun to skirmish—in letters published in the London Spectator—over the issue of unauthorized versions of Mark Twain’s sketches (see 20 Sept 72 to the editor of the London Spectator, n. 7).

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4 Clemens had recently invoked the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (a.d. 37–?100) to humorous effect in his 1871 sketch, “A Brace of Brief Lectures on Science” (Part 2), and in chapter 22 of Roughing It. Clemens’s library included a copy of the two-volume 1829 edition of The Genuine Works of Josephus, although it is not known when he acquired it (SLC 1871 [MT01056]; Gribben, 1:361).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU), is copy-text for the letter and its enclosure.

Previous publication: L5, 110–111.

Provenance:The letter was almost certainly one of four letters from Clemens to Blamire, the property of Frances H. S. Stallybrass (see the commentary for 21 June 72 to Blamire), offered for sale in 1950 by Sotheby’s in London (Sotheby 1950, lot 186). It is not clear whether the enclosure was included in that sale. Information from an unidentified catalog, now with the MS at ViU, suggests that Clifton Waller Barrett purchased the letter and its enclosure at a later sale. He deposited both items at ViU on 16 April 1960.

Emendations and textual notes:

coy copyright • coypy-|right [canceled ‘y’ partly formed]

steal. at J. C. H. • steal. at J. C. H.

firm. Other • firm.—|Other

this the • this e

their the • their

any • any ‸any‸ [postmarked] rewritten for clarity